Developers plan more than 650 hotel rooms for San Jose

By George AvalosOakland Tribune

Posted:
04/23/2013 06:09:17 AM PDT

Updated:
04/23/2013 06:09:24 AM PDT

Hotel developers, emboldened by a surge in revenue in the lodging market in Silicon Valley, want to add more than 650 rooms in San Jose, with Aloft, Hampton Inn and Marriott among the brands coming into the Bay Area's largest city.

"It's good that the market is recognizing that business travel is getting strong again in Silicon Valley," said Joseph Horwedel, city planning director.

One of the newest hotels in the works is a 175-room Aloft hotel slated to be developed in North San Jose at Highway 237 and Great America Parkway, Horwedel said.

Meanwhile, a 162-room Hampton Inn is being planned in downtown San Jose near the Highway 87 and Santa Clara Street interchange. Also under development is a 321-room Marriott on North First Street at Skyport Drive that's being erected by Barry Swenson Builder.

And a Marriott Courtyard is headed for a North San Jose site at North First Street and Highway 237, according to Horwedel. The number of rooms wasn't immediately known.

"We're seeing a big increase in revenue for hotels in the Silicon Valley market," said Wilson Wang, director of operations with Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group, which tracks the California hotel market.

The Santa Clara County market last year enjoyed a 20.8 percent increase in hotel revenue from the previous year, according to figures from Smith Travel Research. The researchers used the most widely accepted metric for the strength of a hotel market, revenue per available room.

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"That was the highest increase in the entire California market for 2012," Wang said. South Lake Tahoe's hotel market came in second with a 17.1 percent increase in hotel room revenue.

"This has prompted a great deal of interest in San Jose on the part of developers and hotel chains," Wang said.

The new Aloft hotel for San Jose is scheduled to open in 2014. In January, Aloft opened a hotel in Cupertino.

The target age for the Aloft brand, according to Atlas Hospitality President Alan Reay, is people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. The Aloft in Cupertino will have 123 rooms with high ceilings similar to lofts. It will also have high-speed Internet access.

Aloft also has opened a hotel near San Francisco airport that is a renovated Clarion Hotel.